Labor Markets

Summary Amidst all of the understandable concern with inflation and recession risks, the evidence continues to foretell a welcome inflection point on the horizon—a rare procyclical upturn in productivity growth. We continue to see signs that a maturing labor market—in which employment rates fully recover from recessionary damage

Summary Amidst all of the understandable concern with inflation and recession risks, the evidence continues to foretell a welcome inflection point on the horizon—a rare procyclical upturn in productivity growth. We continue to see signs that a maturing labor market—in which employment rates fully recover from recessionary damage

The labor market is really softening now.

The September 2023 labor market data continued to show a strong labor market. The headline unemployment rate remained steady at 3.8%, and the establishment survey showed an eye-popping 336,000 jobs added in September—alongside an upwards revision of 79,000 and 40,000 jobs in July and August.

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An earlier version of this piece erroneously attributed this to the wrong author. The author is Preston Mui. Last Friday, we learned that the unemployment rate in August 2023 increased to 3.8% to 3.5%. The employment-to-population ratio was flat at 60.4%, and labor force participation increased to

Summary The main purpose of real-time macroeconomic data releases is to track the evolution in the underlying growth rate of economic activity. The precise levels of employment, wages, total hours, and total dollars of payroll expenditure are less meaningful, and most ripe for substantial revision over time. But even short-run